When Recruitment Involves Job Location

By Paula Santonocito, US Features Editor, Online recruitment magazine

Selling a candidate on a job sometimes means focusing less on the job and more on the location. And place isnít only relevant when it involves relocation.

It doesnít matter whether the job youíre touting is in Oklahoma City or New York City. There are times place is as important as, or even overrides, position.

Working in a particular place

The focus on place is one that regional job boards discovered long ago. In fact, it was the impetus for the creation of regional job board network AllCountyJobs.com LLC.

As a jobseeker in the 1990s, Chris Russell was frustrated because the big job boards were not breaking jobs down as geographically as he felt they could. Although he was searching for employment in Fairfield County, Conn., which is about 40 miles from New York City, searches would return New York City jobs as well.

Russell wasnít interested in commuting. Whatís more, he figured his situation wasnít unique. So, in 1999, during the dot-com boom, he founded a job site focused exclusively on Fairfield County.

At the time, employers in the area thought it was a great idea. ìInitially, their response was that it was something that was needed,î Russell says.

The flagship site received local press coverage and interest increased, in Fairfield County and beyond. Today, Russell serves as President of a network that includes 12 regional sites.

For employers, there are benefits to honing in on a specific geographic region. ìIt gives them a much more local experience in terms of candidates,î Russell says.

AllCountyJobs.com finds approximately 90 percent of respondents are from a job siteís targeted region. The remaining 10 percent are people either interested in or exploring relocation.

According to Russell, a much more locally focused makes a tremendous difference to employers. ìMost companies are not going to pay relocation. They only want local candidates,î he says.

Although the AllCountyJobs network includes the occasional executive position, most jobs are entry- and mid-level positions, in the $25-75K range. Sites feature job postings by companies of all sizes.

Some of these companies, particularly the larger ones, also promote location in their ads. Site blogs explore various aspects of place as well.

Russell finds emphasizing location resonates with jobseekers.

ìTo me, from a jobseeker perspective, I think location is the number one thing on their minds when they start looking for a job. Increasingly, more of them want to work close to home,î he says.

Given the choice of a job that pays an additional $5-10K per year or less time commuting, Russell finds most people would forego the money. In todayís life, time is the number one commodity, he says.

Lists of locations

As a result, recruitment has become more regionally focused.

Consider Craigslist, founded in 1995 as a San Francisco Bay Area website; today, it is a network of classifieds and forums for 450 locations, which include cities in all 50 U.S. states, as well as more than 50 countries.

The lists at Craigslist are expanding at a phenomenal rate. Last November, more than 130 new cities were added. According to Craigslist management, growth has been in response to user request.

Craigslist offers more than jobs. Site visitors buy and sell personal items, look for housing, post and peruse personal ads, and participate in discussion forums.
But make no mistake: Jobs and Craigslist go hand in hand. Craigslist indicates it receives more than 1 million new job postings each month.

Companies use the site to recruit for a wide range of jobs, including C-level positions. CareerXroadsí 6th Annual Sources of Hire Study reports that Craigslist was one of the three most-frequently mentioned niche sites where hires could be attributed in 2006.

Easy of use and cost are no doubt considerations when choosing to post job openings at Craigslist, but so is site volume. Craigslist has more than 7 billion page views each month, which makes it the seventh most popular site on the Internet.

Granted, not every visitor is a jobseeker, but jobseekers visiting Craigslist sites, like those visiting the AllCountyJobs.com network, are focused on location.

Honing in on home base

With the understanding that place is important, corporate careers sites are likewise offering jobseekers the option of filtering jobs by location.

At global consultancy Deloitte & Touche USA, for example, experienced hires can search for jobs by state and, if they choose, by a specific city or town within a state. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer offers similar search capabilities at the U.S. section of its global careers site.

Search engine leader Google, while still providing job opportunities by location, offers a different approach. Under the heading ìBrowse openings,î a jobseeker has the option of selecting ìall U.S. locations.î Doing so returns an alphabetical list of U.S. locations. Each item links to that locationís openings.

Companies, especially multinational corporations or firms with numerous U.S. locations, find a regionally-targeted approach increases the likelihood of a candidate match.

But pointing jobseekers in the direction of a particular place isnít the only way employers are leveraging location at corporate careers sites. A number of companies market their locations, just as they market other aspects of the employment experience.

Microsoft, for example, based in Redmond, Wash., promotes its corporate headquarters in a section called ìSeattle and Vicinity.î The section subheading is ìA Place that Inspires Innovation, Exploration, and Wonder.î

The company provides information about the Seattle area, including that it consistently ranks among the top 10 places to live in the country. Microsoft also aims to dispel the perception that it always rains in Seattle, indicating that ìwhile Seattle does have its share of cloudy and misty days, it actually gets less rain each year than Atlanta, Boston, Houston, New York, or Philadelphia.î

And thereís more. Microsoft provides information about different neighborhoods in a section called ìWhere to Live,î specifics about music, arts, entertainment, and recreation, under ìWhat to Do,î and an entire page of ìSeattle Area Links.î

What importance does Microsoft place on place? In the MBA section of the companyís careers site, ìSeattle and Vicinityî is found under ìWhy Choose Microsoft.î In the list of available links under this heading, ìSeattle and Vicinityî comes before ìBenefits and Perks.î

When location means relocation

Arguably, location is even more relevant to recruitment when it involves relocation.

Various aspects related to location weigh heavily in employeesí decisions to move for job opportunities. Consider the top three reasons employees turn down employment offers, from a recent Prudential Relocation survey: family issues, cost of living/housing concerns, and spouse employment concerns.

Indeed, family issues related to the new place, such as schools and neighborhoods, matter to employees with children. Todayís dual income households also mean spouses and partners must find employment in the new area. And of course how salary translates to the new location impacts an employeeís actual earnings.

These may seem like ongoing concerns, but Prudential points to another, more recent obstacle to relocation: the changing U.S. housing market. It finds that falling home prices factor in to employee decisions about whether to relocate.

The overall result is that companies, even those willing to pay expenses, are finding it more difficult to entice employees to relocate.

Accordingly, a report from Prudential based on the survey offers strategies that address the financial aspects of relocation, including a home sale program, miscellaneous expense allowance, and substitution of benefits, among others.

However, absent from the reportís recommendations is the issue at the heart of relocation: location.

A relocation decision, ultimately, comes down to whether or not a person wants to live and work in a particular place. By addressing the location aspects of an employment opportunity, a company will end up addressing the majority of a candidateís concerns. Providing this information may not always sell the candidate on a job, but the person who takes the job is likely to be a better fit for the position.

Whether a company is recruiting locally or looking to entice candidates to relocate, an online recruitment strategy that includes place is apt to have a positive impact on placements.

Paula Santonocito is a journalist specializing in workforce management issues. She is the author of nearly 1,000 articles on a wide range of topics, including online recruitment, which she has covered since the early days of Web-based employment advertising and candidate sourcing. In addition to serving as features editor of Online Recruitment Magazineís North American edition, she also serves as AIRS News editor, overseeing news content for the global recruitment training and technology solutions company at www.airsdirectory.com. Articles by Paula Santonocito are featured in many global and domestic publications and information outlets, including HRWire, a publication to which she regularly contributes. She can be reached at psantonocito@yahoo.com.